The kitchen display system (KDS)

The KDS is a four-column board: New, Preparing, Ready, Out for delivery. Cards move left to right as staff tap status transitions. The leftmost column is the freshest, most attention-needing column; the rightmost is closest to handoff.

New orders flash and play a tone once when they arrive, so the kitchen reacts to incoming work without anyone honking, calling, or walking over from the counter.

Kitchen mode is best for menus where one order spans multiple stations — fries done first, burger second, drink last. Tap the view toggle in the header and pick "Kitchen" instead of "Runner". Cards then show each item with its own status pill — pending, preparing, ready — and cooks tap an item to advance it.

Item status drives the full order forward automatically. Starting the first item moves a new order into preparing; marking the final item ready moves the whole order into the ready handoff queue so the runner can act immediately.

Items routed to kitchen stations appear on the matching station screens; kitchen PINs without station assignments see all items.

When a menu item has a prep-time target, its kitchen row shows that target while work is active. Late items turn red, the full order card gains a late warning, and the kitchen header shows the active-order workload plus a live late-item count. The timer refreshes every thirty seconds.

Managers can set a kitchen workload alert threshold in branch settings. When active orders reach that number, the kitchen screen displays a high-workload warning without automatically pausing incoming orders.

Items without a configured prep time stay visible and actionable, but they do not claim a target or trigger a late alert. Set realistic prep targets in the menu editor for the items that need service-level monitoring.

iOS browsers will not play audio without a user interaction first. The first tap on the page (signing in, opening any card) unlocks audio for the rest of the session — cold-loading the page and waiting without tapping anything produces silent alerts.

The reliable fix is the home-screen install: open the page in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, and always launch from that icon instead of a Safari tab. Audio then behaves like a native app. This is an iOS rule for every web app, not a DashDine quirk.

The KDS talks to DashDine through a real-time connection. When it drops — usually flaky Wi-Fi or a tablet that briefly slept — a "Connection lost" banner appears at the top of the board. The workspace automatically retries with exponential backoff (one second, two, four, eight) until it reconnects.

Orders submitted while you were disconnected are safe on the server and appear the moment the connection returns. Status changes tapped while offline are queued and sent on reconnect; audio alerts for orders that arrived during the gap play together when the connection comes back.